“Black are the brooding clouds and troubled the deep waters, when the Sea of Thought, first heaving from a calm, gives up its Dead...” – Charles Dickens, “The Chimes”
CAT SCRATCH FEVER, A WINTRY TALE
I wake up with a start.
Something is amiss.
My cat is staring at me. Not in his usual location, I might add. He is right in front of me as I sit up, staring with the look of someone who has been staring for quite some time. Borderline creepy, but then again, he could just be hungry. It’s a strong possibility. And yet, it’s only 7 am, I think. It could be night time. What is time anymore?
Something is clearly amiss.
My cat was not the instigator to my rude awakening, I should add. He was just there observing, likely playing witness to the climactic scene on my face just when dream jolts razed the furrowed lines of my uncertain stark reality. Consider it a furry metaphor for a long 9 month+ experience, watching from within and afar, as the world grows smaller and smaller. The quarantine from the current pandemic had started off as one hell of a beast. Then it morphed slowly into a kindred creature with tentacles that sucked away one’s will to do laundry. Then in true changeling form, it transitioned into a third bleak entity, a fourth and quite frankly, it may or may not now be a creeping shadow somewhere between my corner closet and the dark crack that formed from one side of the window to the dresser. I’ll have to get back to you on that. It’s anyone’s guess at this moment.
No, not my cat. I definitely had a nightmare. Trouble is…it’s slipping away quickly. A banshee screaming maybe? No, not quite. Just your standard shrieking and overwhelming sense of dread. A scant image of free-falling with ice spires waiting at the bottom of a drop so far one must whistle through not one but two cloud formations. That feeling when you can no longer scream because the situation has normalized after a passage of time and your throat has hallowed out.
I amble out of the covers into the chill of the stark dawn or possibly night air. I generally keep my windows open to varying degrees. Air flow is healthy and it can get stuffy with the ongoing multiple radiators I’ve code-named “Wild Dragon #1,” “Surreal Fire Beast,” and “Hot Stephanie.” I use the feminine so that every now and then I might cry out to no one in particular, “Thar she blows!” when the hissing gets a bit eccentric.
Now this is odd. The corners of the bathroom windows are crystallizing on the outside at an unusually fast pace. Why is this familiar? This can’t be science. It seems a bit fast. Then again, I’m not a scientist. Outside I make out a single dark cloud seemingly out of place from the rest of the sky. It almost looks two dimensional. Maybe I’m just seeing spots. There is no sound. That is, there isn’t until my cat jumps up into the sink expecting the faucet to magically turn on. Distraction is an orange furry ball with legs and static electricity.
meow.
Ah yes, thirst. Good point. I make my way into the small kitchen by the water pitcher. Then it hits me. “The Day After Tomorrow”
It’s that scene when the air is so cold it crystallizes the surroundings. Everything freezes in mere seconds and the characters have to run to find shelter and fire or else freeze to death in faster than two shakes of a lamb’s tail.
Huh. Also, why is my leg itchy? Cat scratch? But when & why?
I look up at the kitchen windows. They seem normal so I head back to the bathroom again. No crystals. Gone. Like they were never there. Perhaps I’m still dreaming in and out of things. I should head back to bed. It’s too early. Sun’s barely yawning. Now where’s my Neosporin at?
My cat is staring again. But, now this is unnerving. Speaking of changelings, he looks so unlike himself. Almost like he is pouting, as if on the verge of tears.
“Aww…what is it B? This scratch ain’t so bad.”
The most subtle of details shifts and he no longer looks sad. I am pretty sure I’ve never seen this expression on my cat before. It’s eerie. My skin starts to crawl and my limbs are going stiff. But rigor mortis is for dead people and…wait, what on earth is that?
A shadow grows unfathomably grandiose. It’s in my mind, I think. It might not be? A grumbling and then a cold icy voice “You need to get out.”
Confusion addling my brain, my first thought shoots to my vitamin D tablets. I have been taking supplements to make up for the lack of natural sunshine in my quarantine life.
“What, like in the sun??” I ask to the flickering darkness that is no longer in the dark corners of my head. It grows like shadowy ooze absorbing the walls into what can only be described as a heartless void.
My stiff limbs slowly creak backwards until my back is against the bedroom window. Wild Dragon #1 is raging while a chill gust of outside air teases the nape of my lower back. That singular sensation is fighting a losing battle called consciousness. I am a dead end. My mind is a pointilist painting of fuzziness, light headed and indistinct. This isn’t good and is headed to worse. A flinty scent reminiscent of scrap metal burning amidst a trash heap. My lungs gasp. The foul air is seeping away, but so is the rest.
I can’t breathe.
Something is pushing me.
No no no no no
There’s barely a week till 2021.
I am so close.
So powerless and fuzzy.
I grasp at the sill.
A single furry paw.
It claws at my weak clinging fingers. Is this help or betrayal?
So many unanswered questions.
I fall.
There are 9 stories.
I shouldn’t have named him Brutus. THE END.
Did you know that Charles Dickens wrote more than just one ghost story? Behold, my plans for the holidays: a re-read of The Chimes.
“…Monsters uncouth and wild, arise in premature, imperfect resurrection; the several parts and shapes of different things are joined and mixed by chance; and when, and how, and by what wonderful degrees, each separates from each, and every sense and object of the mind resumes its usual form and lives again, no man- though every man is every day the casket of this type of the Great Mystery- can tell.”
― Charles Dickens, The Chimes
Three years ago, I created a cocktail to pair with this novella. Stirred chilled and up: 1.5 oz. Isle of Skye 8yr. Scotch, 1 oz. Cocchi Torino Vermouth, .5 oz. Mirabelle Eau de Vie, a dash of Orange Bitters